Igelstrom Sets Two National Records on Day 4 of Swedish Nationals

LANDSKRONA, Sweden, July 6. EMMA Igelstrom has been unstoppable here at the Swedish Nationals in Landskrona, a meet that is serving as the selection trials for the European Championships.

Before today she had set national records in the 50m (31.41) and 200m breaststroke (2:27.36). Tonight she set two more. The first came as no surprise, but the second most definitely was. In the 200 IM, she hacked naearly two seconds off the old mark with a world-class 2:14.79.

After the race, an overjoyed Igelstrom commented:
"This was probably the most enjoyable national record I have set. I have been swimming IM and butterfly races just to get a lot of races during these days. And then to break this record with such a margin is just very cool!"

The other record broken by Emma was in the morning´s prelims of 100 breastroke with the time of 1:09.05. Tomorrow she hopes to swim under 1:09 in the final, lowering the mark again.
In the 200 IM final, Sara Nordenstam was second in 2:16.58, just missing the old record, with Malin Svanstrom third in 2:17.95.

Lars Frolander won the 100m free in a much tighter race than expected. After swimming 49.80 in the prelims, the former SMU star won tonight in 50.46, just ahead of Univ. of Arizona sophomore Eric la Fleur. Stefan Nystrand was third in 51.16, while Univ. of California grad Mattias Ohlin was fourth in 51.81.

These same four swimmers won the silver medal at the Short Course World Champiuonships in Moscow this spring.

After the race Frolander said; "This morning I was still lifting weights as I did not have any prelims. I got to pay for this the last 50 meters. After the turn it was also quite a lot of waves and rough water."

Micke Jacobsson won two titles this night. He started out the evening by posting 2:05.54 in 200 IM and some events later he won 400 free 4:01.66.

Asa Sandlund captured her second long distance title by winning the 800 free, 8:47.44.

In the last event for the evening, the men's 4×200 freestyle, the race was very tight between Malmo KK and Neptun from Stockholm. Even though the times were 8-9 seconds above the national record, the supporters of both teams got a live thriller. Malmo´s breaststroker, Martin Gustavsson, finally out-touched Neptun´s backstroker, Stefano Prestinoni, at the very end of the race. Malmo´s winning time was 7:41.22, with Neptun at 7:41.38.

In the overall battle among the teams, Malmo is leading ahead of Neptun before the final day of competition.